Steve Jones - Lonely Boy: Tales from a Sex Pistol

One of the main things I remember about growing up in West London in the 1960s was the corrugated iron, that and the odd Ford Anglia driving about. There were building sites and debris everywhere it was like the whole place was falling down around us. And the corrugated iron was a real nause (i.e. a fucking pain in the arse) to climb over. It was eight feet high and sharp enough to cut into your hands as you pulled yourself up to the top. It was almost like those builders didnt want me to get in there and develop my driving skills by hot-wiring bulldozers to smash up their tea huts, the inconsiderate cunts.

You didnt see a lot of film stars on the mean streets of Shepherds Bush in those days, even though the BBC TV studios were just around the corner. So when Jack Wild the kid who played the Artful Dodger in Oliver! walked past the end of my road, one day in the late 1960s, that was always going to be something which caught my eye. I was already a bit of an artful dodger myself by that time maybe not picking a pocket or two yet, but certainly giving the odd stolen bike or brand-new train set fresh from the Hamleys stockroom a good home. But I wasnt looking at Jack as a criminal role model. All that interested me was the fact that he was famous if itd been Elsie Tanner from Coronation Street walking down my road, Id have been just as excited.

Me and a few other kids cottoned on to who he was and started following him. I suppose this wasnt anything too weird in itself, just the common reaction any thirteen-year-old might have to someone they recognised from a film or off the TV wanting to be as close to him as possible in the hope that some of the magic might rub off. But I always had to push things one stage further. One by one, all my mates dropped away, but I carried on trailing him, like he was Peter Pan or something. Im not sure why now. I guess I was just more strongly drawn than they were to that special quality stardom gave to him.

Jack Wild was a couple of years older than me, but he wasnt much bigger than I was. He didnt look nothing special he wasnt wearing his top hat or anything. Its just that when youre one of those kids who has that sense of yourself as being trapped and maybe a bit lonely, if you see someone who seems like theyve got it all sorted, you think if you can just be close to them everything will be all right and all the pain you feel will just go away.

I dont know what he thought about me following him. I guess it freaked him out a bit, especially with all that corrugated iron along the sides of the road that hed never have been able to escape over. At that time my mates and I were part of the first wave of skinheads; listening to Motown, Ska and Blue Beat, loving the music of people like Prince Buster who wed picked up on from the West Indian kids who lived around us. So if Jack had turned round to sneak a glance at me trying to look casual while he did it hed have seen me bowling along behind him in my oxblood Dr Marten boots with the space-age soles you could see through. I polished the shit out of my first pair of those. Id have probably been wearing some nice Sta-Prest or Prince of Wales check trousers as well, and one of the crisp Ben Sherman shirts Id go all the way to Richmond to nick from a shop called Ivy League.

He probably felt quite relieved when I finally gave up the pursuit about a mile further on. In later years Id cross a lot of lines to get close to people I thought could fix me, but I hadnt started boozing yet by this time, so I still had a few boundaries left. Jack Wild would be off to Hollywood a short while after, but I dont think his story ended too happily. A lot of those child stars seem to have tragic lives in the end, dont they? Fame fucks them up at an early age, but when youre busy envying someone you never think about the fact that they might have problems of their own.

As a kid I used to have fantasies where I would imagine having differ ent parents. Id see people in films or on TV shows and think, Why cant I be in their family? Diana Dors, who was kind of the English Marilyn Monroe, she was one of them. I would spend ages thinking about how much better off Id be if I was her kid: Let me be with Diana, instead of these parents Ive got. The funny thing is, I dont even think it was a sexual thing at the time, I just didnt like my shit life and I was looking for anything I could grab onto to get me away from the place I was in.

Its not like I had the worst childhood ever. You hear horrific stories of kids going through way worse abuse than I did, and Id hate it to look like Im trying to put myself on that level. What I do know is how much things that happened when I was a kid fucked me up still now, to this day. Of course the chemistry of everyones brain is different, so some people might deal with a lot worse and come out fine, and others could have it really easy and still feel very hard done by. All I can tell you about is my own experiences, and given how dodgy my memory is, I cant even be too sure about some of them.

I aint got a clue what my story is gonna look like once its all set down on paper. I havent got any kind of agenda at the outset, beyond a few things I want to set straight, and maybe hoping Ill be able to make a bit more sense of how different stages of my life fit together. One thing Im pretty sure of is that Im not going to come out of the whole thing smelling of roses.

You know that bit in A Clockwork Orange , where the main guy has his eyes forced open to make him feel like shit every time he remembers what a rotten cunt he was? Thats pretty much how writing this book is going to feel for me. Obviously no ones forcing me to do it, and Ive had my share of good times as well, but now I cant be doing with my old shenanigans any more it does sometimes make me feel almost physically sick to think of some of the horrible shit I used to get up to.

Even though its been half my life since I first stopped drinking and taking drugs, I still wake up in a cold sweat sometimes, thinking about all the things Ive done that Im not proud of. But if I made a big song and dance about holding myself accountable for every new crime against humanity as I commit it, this book would get very boring very quickly. So Im going to have to ask you to take it on trust from the kick-off that Im trying to be a less despicable person these days, and then anyone who wants to judge me can do so at the full-time whistle.

One thing I can promise you is that I wont be pontificating about how everyone else needs to get sober. I dont give a fuck if other people wanna get high. Ive had my go and now its your turn knock yourself out if thats what you wanna do. Of course if someone else can relate to my experiences and by some miracle that helps them to be less of an arsehole than I was, then thats all well and good. But I dont want to be that cunt where its like, Oh, he was a rock and roller, but now hes telling everyone else how to live. Fuck that preachy guy. Hes the last person I want to be. Just because I eventually ended up following Jack Wild to Hollywood, that doesnt mean I bought a one-way ticket to La-La Land as well.

Itd be a few more years after bumping into the Artful Dodger till I met my own Fagin, aka Malcolm McLaren (who loved all that Dickensian shit). Once that happened, it was like ol Jack had passed on the baton, and it wasnt long before our merry band of musical outlaws started picking record companies pockets like there was no tomorrow. But by the time wed realised that our light-fingered Svengali had spent all the loot on The Great Rock n Roll Swindle a film explaining how the whole punk thing was his idea and we were just a bunch of suckers who couldnt play it turned out the joke was on us.

And as for the annoying little brat with the great bone structure whos always asking for more well, lets leave Johnny Rotten out of this for a while, shall we? Hes had his say a few times. Maybe enough times. Its my turn now. Because much as the Sex Pistols couldnt have existed without John or Malcolm, or Cookie, or Glen, or even Sid it was my shit upbringing that got the ball rolling. Thats not me showing off, its just a fact.